BBC tour video

Here is a video of what we saw and learnt on our BBC studies tour trip!

Filming ideas

After watching our film opening so far, we have decided that it would be good to film our protagonist walking towards the train station, then buying a ticket at the machine.

 Whilst she is standing still it would be ideal to maybe do a POV shot of the ticket machine as she selects 'London Marylebone'.

 After, we will do close ups of her handbag and shoes. This is a typical convention seen in chick flicks and so it would be ideal to include this the next time we film. Also, it will appeal to our target audience to have our protagonist dressed fashionably.

We have then decided to film Samantha rushing to Costa as she has forgotten her Boss' coffee. We will then see her rushing out a few seconds later, we are contemplating standing in one place and doing a pan as she rushes past the camera, we could then pause on the road whilst she steps out the frame, and do our film title here. Furthermore, we felt our target audience would be able to recognise Costa Coffee.

Film editing

This is what our film roughly looks like so far, it is far from finished however this is a rough outline and we would like our friends opinions on what we could improve on or what would make it more interesting. It's ideal asking our friends as they happen to be our target audience, teenage girls for chick flicks.

More filming for film opening

On Thursday, the 20th of november the media studies students in both year 12 and year 13 are going to visit the BBC Studies in London!
Luckily, this gives us an opportunity to film a bit more, on the journey to the studios, we will be taking a train into London.
Fortunately we can then film shots of the moving train and entering marylebone station. This will be used to represent Samanthas early morning routine in which she travels to work.

Completed filming on Sunday

Yesterday we managed to film our scenes, luckily we were extremely fortunate in that we managed to film everything we wanted within the 2 hours. However we had an issue on friday afternoon where our actress (the protagonist) could no longer be part of our film opening!
We were then forced to hastily find a replacement actress. Luckily we found someone, Molly in the year above (year 13) who said she was able to step in and help us! We told Molly to wear posh, smart clothing and we met her on sunday after quickly informing her of the location and what we wanted her to do/ what our film opening is about.
Unfortunately we spent about 20 minutes on a shot that I particularly struggled to get right. A simple wide shot of Molly entering the room, and sitting down. But as she sat down, her head would get cut off at the top of the shot. So I struggled to follow her in time and move the camera up and down as she sat down. Eventually I managed to get the shot right, and we moved on to various other shots. We filmed the same scene over and over again from different angles and so when we were editing we had plenty of shots to choose from.
We each took it in turns to film different shots so that it was fair and we all had a go. In one scene, I even make an appearance as an extra, someone who supposedly works at the magazine office, attempting to put a poster up on the wall (which was kindly given to us by hairdressers who heard about our ideas and were eager to help us).
We thought it would be a good idea to have a few of us in the background as extras because it would make it more clear that it is an office, where you would have people busy in the background.
Georgia also makes an appearance as an extra where she pushes a clothes rail into the room, unfortunately this was when I was filming the wide shot of Molly coming in and sitting down (when I struggled to do it correctly) and so she had to repeatedly had to come in and out pushing a clothes rail!
Emily did the tracking shot of Molly walking into the office, which was difficult because she followed Molly with a handheld camera opening the door, and walking through. Unfortunately when we watched it back we felt it looked slightly unprofessional and so when editing we might cut bits of that scene out.
One issue was that we had never visited the location before and so we were unsure of where we were going to set up the cameras and all our props, and how we should film our characters entering rooms. Although when we got there it was easy to quickly set up as we had a limited amount of time to film we just had to decide straight away.
But overall it was a successful day and we managed to get everything done that we had intended to do!

List of equipment needed for shooting

Props:

·     Clothes rail with clothes on hangers – coats, blouses, cocktail dress

·     Tape measure

·     Dressmaker’s dummy

·     Posters to hang on the wall

·     Coffee cups (?)

·     Posh Handbag

·     Phone

·     Flowers for decoration 

·     Clipboard

·     Magazines

·     Laptop

·     Stands for pictures (?)

·     Maybe a printer(?)

*Props with a (?) are props we may not necessarily need

Equipment for filming:

• Camera
• Spare batteries in case camera runs out of battery
• Spare camera incase other one breaks 
• Tripod
• Microphone
• list of shots we need to film 
• lead for microphone to camera 

Costumes

As we ourselves are planning to make an appearance as extras in the background we will have to dress appropriately. For this reason we have all decided to wear monochromatic colours as seen in the devil wears prada.
 This shows how our actress Molly, (playing Samantha) will stand out and differ from the rest of us.
here is an idea of what we would like Molly to wear: 

·     Either a smart skirt and top/dress

·     Heels or smart boots

·     Designer Handbag

·     smart blazer for office environment 

And here is an idea of what we would like Miss Try to wear:

• Smart,monochromatic clothing 
• office wear
• Glasses to make her look older/more professional?

We wanted to ensure our target audience could identify with some of the fashion choices made for our film opening, as we know our target audience would have watched plenty of chick flicks before, we decided to follow these conventions to appeal to our audience. 

Chick Flick Target Audience

By getting together a focus group of girls aged 14-18, and asking people what their favourite films, forms of social media, tv programmes, hobbies, celebrities, shops and music are we managed to produce this poster which represents a large sample of teenagers from our target audience.

If we attempt to keep these in mind when choosing how to produce our film opening, it should make our film opening more successful, and more relatable for young teens.

Finalised Story line

After weeks of consideration and preparation, we have finally decided on what our story line should involve for our 2 minute film opening- on Sunday we start filming!

We have decided to film the conversation between the editor of the magazine and the intern in an office environment. Luckily, due to various contacts we have been able to arrange a time for us to film our scenes in an office.

We have decided to start with our protagonist walking into the office (match on action) , we then will do cut aways and close ups to various props around the room i.e: magazines, posters and a clothes rail. We will each bring in bits of clothing to put on the clothes rail for verisimilitude. We would like to have people sorting things out on the clothes rail with a tape measure. 
we would then like to do a mid shot of our actor sitting at a desk, sorting through papers when she finds a letter saying 'confidential'. We would then like to do an over the shoulder shot of her opening the letter, once she reads the words 'court summons' we will then cut to a close up of the confusion/shock on her face. 
Just before you see her going to bring out the rest of the letter to see what it says, we will then have our 'editor' shout out 'samantha?' in the background, as she does this we will then switch back to a mid shot to show our actress struggling to quickly put the letter back in the envelope whilst her boss gets nearer to entering the room.
Once the editor comes in, we will switch to a wide shot she will demand 'where is my coffee?' then slamming her books down on the table, once she does this we will then go back to a mid shot and show once again Samantha's confusion as she realises she forgot to get her boss' coffee! 

We have 2 hours in which to film all of this in so I am hopeful we will be able to get all of our scenes filmed! 

Storyboards

Here are our storyboards which show various shots we hope we can do for the beginning half of our film opening.